40 years ago Israel attacked a US Navy ship and killed and wounded US Navy sailors. The US government covered it up. What do the Israelis have on our government that they can kill US servicemen and spy on us with impunity? When is our government going to start doing what is best for the US and not what is best for Israel? Looking at Congress and our fearful Presidential candidates, on both sides (except for about two), probably not any time soon.
Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry, it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel's June 8, 1967, bombing of the Navy intelligence ship Liberty.
On that sunny, clear day 40 years ago, Israel's combined air and naval forces attacked the Liberty for two hours, inflicting 70 percent casualties. Thirty-four American sailors died, and 172 were injured. The Liberty remained afloat only by the crew's heroic efforts.
Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd – president of the Court of Inquiry – that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”
The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for 40 years. What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel's actions – even when they kill Americans?
Today, survivors of Israel's cruel attack will gather in Washington, D.C., to honor their dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors themselves to testify publicly.
For decades, I have remained silent. I am a military man, and when orders come in from the secretary of defense and president of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to share the truth.
In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel's attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.
Only hours after the Liberty arrived it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over a period of three hours. The Liberty was flying a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.
A few hours later more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters, armed with rockets and machine guns. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.
A few minutes later a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which not only pelted the ship with gunfire but also with napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire and dozens were wounded and killed, excluding several of the ship's top officers.
The Liberty's radio team tried to issue a distress call, but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the Israeli planes with what one communications specialist called "a buzzsaw sound". Finally, an open channel was found and the Liberty got out a message to the USS America, the Sixth Fleet's large aircraft carrier, that it was under attack
Two F-4s left the carrier to come to the Liberty's aid. Apparently, the jets were armed only with nuclear weapons. When word reached the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara became irate and ordered the jets to return. "Tell the Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately," he barked. McNamara's injunction was reiterated in saltier terms by Admiral David L. McDonald, the chief of Naval Operations: "You get those fucking airplanes back on deck, and you get them back down." The planes turned around. And the attack on the Liberty continued.
Today is the anniversary of a great Israeli war crime. They have many war crimes but this one is a key event: the attack on the USS Liberty, an observer ship sent to monitor the war launched by Israel. This war was the one whereby they conquered the West Bank and Gaza and is a key event leading up to the future WWIII that will probably destroy humanity. Time to talk about this event, one of the most hidden military massacres in our history, one that is now finally seeing the light of day thanks to the internet.
Even the neoconservative warmongers, who deceived Americans with the promise of a "cakewalk war" that would be over in six weeks, believe that the war is lost. But they have not given up. They have a last desperate plan: Bomb Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney is spearheading the neocon plan, and Norman Podhoretz is the plan's leading propagandist with his numerous pleas published in the Wall Street Journal and Commentary to bomb Iran. Podhoretz, like every neoconservative, is a total Islamophobe. Podhoretz has written that Islam must be deracinated and destroyed, a genocide for the Muslim people.
The neocons think that by bombing Iran the U.S. will provoke Iran to arm the Shi'ite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing rocket propelled grenades and surface-to-air missiles and unleash the militias against U.S. troops. These weapons would neutralize U.S. tanks and helicopter gunships and destroy the U.S. military edge, leaving divided and isolated U.S. forces subject to being cut off from supplies and retreat routes. With America on the verge of losing most of its troops in Iraq, the cry would go up to "save the troops" by nuking Iran.
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes by Peter Matthiessen
In an interview with Richard Powers, he mentioned reading The Birds of Heaven in reading about cranes for his book The Echo Maker. It had been a long time since I had read any Peter Matthiessen. It was time to rectify that situation. From Amazon:
Acclaimed writer Peter Matthiessen, a self-professed "craniac," has been observing and studying all kinds of birds most of his life, but his pursuit of cranes is closer to a spiritual quest than a naturalist's exercise. These majestic, mythic, and notoriously shy birds, capable of soaring at heights of 20,000 feet, are often fond of remote and rugged places, so just locating the birds can be difficult enough, determining an accurate number often impossible. Some locales, such as the breeding grounds on the Platte River in Nebraska, boast flocks half a million strong--"by far the greatest crane assemblies on earth"; other areas support only a precious few. Matthiessen's search for 15 different species of cranes has taken him to hidden corners of Siberia, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Sudan, and Australia (where Atherton cranes were not even discovered until 1961). Despite his many years of adventure and wide travels, each crane sighting is still a thrill for him, and his curiosity and contagious enthusiasm bring the book alive. But The Birds of Heaven also serves as an ecological warning: "Perhaps more than any other living creatures, they evoke the retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth, and air upon which their species--and ours, too, though we learn it very late--must ultimately depend for survival."
On a rare clear morning -- the first day of summer 1992 -- flying across the Bering Strait from the Yukon delta toward the Diomede Islands and the Chukotskiy Peninsula of Siberia, I imagine the gray sun-silvered strait as seen from on high by a migrating crane, more particularly, by the golden eye of the Crane from the East, as the lesser sandhill crane of North America is known to traditional peoples on its westernmost breeding territory in Siberia. The sandhill commonly travels a mile above the earth and can soar higher, to at least twenty thousand feet -- not astonishing when one considers that the Eurasian and demoiselle cranes ascend to three miles above sea level traversing the Himalaya in their north and south migrations between Siberia and the Indian subcontinent.
That cranes may journey at such altitudes, disappearing from the sight of earthbound mortals, may account for their near-sacred place in the earliest legends of the world as messengers and harbingers of highest heaven. In Cree Indian legend, Crane carries Rabbit to the moon. Aesop extols the crane's singular ability "to rise above the clouds into endless space, and survey the wonders of the heavens, as well as of the earth beneath, with its seas, lakes, and rivers, as far as the eye can reach," and Homer and Aristotle comment on great crane migrations. Every land where they appear has tales and myths about the cranes, which since ancient times have represented longevity and good fortune, harmony and fidelity. Heaven-bound ancients are commonly depicted riding on a crane, or assuming the crane's majestic form for their arrival in the clouds of immortality.
The larger cranes, over five feet tall, with broad strong wings eight feet in span, appear well capable of bearing aloft a wispy old-time sage. The cranes are the greatest of the flying birds and, to my mind, the most stirring, not less so because the horn notes of their voices, like clarion calls out of the farthest skies, summon our attention to our own swift passage on this precious earth. Perhaps more than any other living creatures, they evoke the retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth, and air upon which their species -- and ours, too, though we learn it very late -- must ultimately depend for survival.
As Clausewitz observed, war itself is the best teacher. This war has gone on so long that even those who were zealous but unskilled have "been to school" on American forces for so long that they have learned to so all the things mentioned in this article. When this is combined with the cadres provided by the former Iraqi armed forces, there emerges a "heady" brew endlessly capable of learning, adapting and improvising.
The Post story about the action fought by US SF and the Iraqi police recounts the relative incapacity of the police vis a vis the insurgents. If it had not been for American leadership in this engagement, the insurgents would probably have "bagged" the lot.
An interesting note in this story is the factoid that although the gadgetry developed by Meigs' IED Defeat Task Force is effective, the number of casualties is still rising because the insurgents are building and installing ever more IEDS, many of which are truly huge. So far the US has spent something over 3 billion dollars on the IED problem.
Yes, Kevin, the war is a contest of wills. Having said that, it is also true that American popular support for the war will not continue if the methods being used do not appear to be effective.
So far, there is little non-PR evidence that the Kagan/Keane/Petraeus plan is "clearing" Baghdad of insurgent and militia control.
If that continues into September, the war will lose so much support that a catastrophic ending will become inevitable.
For Jews of my generation who came of age during the anti-apartheid struggle, there was no shaking the nagging sense that what Israel was doing in the West Bank was exactly what the South African regime was doing in the townships. Even as we waged our own intifada against apartheid in South Africa, we saw daily images of young Palestinians facing heavily armed Israeli police in tanks and armored vehicles with nothing more than stones, gasoline bombs and the occasional light weapon; a whole community united behind its children who had decided to cast off the yoke under which their parents suffered. And when Yitzhak Rabin, more famous as a signatory on the Oslo Agreement, ordered the Israeli military to systematically break the arms of young Palestinians in the hope of suppressing an entirely legitimate revolt, thuggery had become a matter of national policy. It was only when some of those same young men began blowing themselves up in Israeli restaurants and buses that many Israel supporters were once again able to construe the Israelis as the victim in the situation; during the intifada of the 1980s they could not question who was David and who was Goliath. Even for those of us who had grown up in the idealism of the left-Zionist youth movements, Israel had become a grotesque parody of everything we stood for.
Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank 40 years ago this week. The victory was celebrated as a great triumph, at once tripling the size of the land under Israeli control, including East Jerusalem. It was, however, a Pyrrhic victory. As the occupation stretched over the decades, it transformed and deformed Israeli society. It led Israel to abandon the norms and practices of a democratic society until, in the name of national security, it began to routinely accept the brutal violence of occupation and open discrimination and abuse of Palestinians, including the torture of prisoners and collective reprisals for Palestinians attacks. Palestinian neighborhoods, olive groves and villages were, in the name of national security, bulldozed into the ground.
Israel’s image has shifted from that of a heroic, open society set amid a sea of despotic regimes to that of an international pariah. Israel’s West Bank separation barrier, built ostensibly to keep out Palestinian bombers, has also been used to swallow huge tracts of the West Bank into Israel. Palestinian towns are ringed by Israeli checkpoints. Major roads in the West Bank are reserved for Israeli settlers. The U.N. estimates that about half the West Bank is now off-limits to Palestinians. And every week there are new reports of Palestinian produce that is held up until it rots, pregnant women giving birth in cars because they cannot get to hospitals, and even senseless and avoidable deaths, such as one young woman who died recently when she couldn’t get through a checkpoint to her kidney dialysis treatment.
"We are raising commanders who are policemen,” former Israeli General Amiram Levine told the newspaper Maariv. “We ask them to excel at the checkpoint. What does it means to excel at the checkpoint? It means being enough of a bastard to delay a pregnant woman from getting to the hospital.”
"I don't know what I would do if my daughter had to go through that humiliation." A U.S. congressman said those words to me while watching Qalandia checkpoint, the key Israeli roadblock between occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. As we mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 war and Israel's military occupation of Palestinian territory, his comment is particularly poignant. As both a Palestinian and an American, I wonder what my fellow Americans would do if they lived for 40 years with every aspect of their lives controlled by a foreign army, or what members of Congress would do if they had to pass through an occupier's checkpoint on Capitol Hill.
An above the fold front page piece in today’s New York Times makes a hard-hitting contribution to pulling people's heads out of the sand on Palestinian issues and to realizing that the alternative to Hamas may not be a return to the warm familiarity of Fatah, but rather a lurch in the direction of al-Qaedism. The article “Jihadist Groups Fill a Palestinian Power Vacuum,” looks at the situation both in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and in Gaza. Steven Erlanger and Hassan Fattah describe a series of recent attacks in Gaza against internet cafés, music stores, and international schools, in addition to the ongoing standoff at Nahr al-Bared in Tripoli, Lebanon. They explain that in the context of the weakening of both Fatah and Hamas and the increasingly violent rivalry between them “Jihadi freelancers with murky links are filling a vacuum.”
The piece gets really interesting when they introduce Mr. Taha from the Ain al Hilwe refugee camp near Sidon. Mr. Taha confides to us that “there is a central problem and that is al-Qaeda and they are spreading…The Islamic awakening…is going to become a huge problem for us.” And here’s the punchline from the NYT: “Mr. Taha’s fears are remarkable because of who he is: not a secular campaigner or a Fatah apparatchik, but a senior member of Hamas.” This is what prospectsforpeace.com has been arguing - that al-Qaeda and Hamas are not the same thing and to lump them together makes not only for bad analysis, but also for bad policy - plus, the kind of political Islamic movements represented by Hamas may be the last line of defense before we see the proliferation of an even more powerful al-Qaedist threat. And for the umpteenth time, no, this does not turn Hamas into a bunch of lovable teddy bears. The world is more complex than good guys vs. bad guys. More often than not, sensible political alliance-building has to be with imperfect inhabitants of a broad grey area.
To re-cap: the focus of Hamas is on opposing the occupation and reforming Palestinian society, the focus of Al-Qaeda is on opposing the West per se and spear-heading a violent revolution in the Arab and Muslim worlds - the one is reformist the other revolutionary; one nationalist, the other post-nationalist; one grievance-based, the other fundamental.
El Camino Real started as a fragile footpath four centuries ago. Spanish explorers etched it deeper during their expeditions northward to claim land and riches for the King or Spain. Thousands of migrants, miners, missionaries, and merchants traveled this very road throughout time. The trail that began as a scratch in the earth is now a bustling highway with cars zipping by and planes flying overhead.
In the last two to three years Russia has been on a geopolitical offensive in the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. It has been gradually regaining the ground lost in the aftermath of the American invasion of Afghanistan and the Georgian, Ukrainian and Kyrgyz revolutions.
Central Asia
The first major victory for Russia came in Tajikistan in 2004. The country was drifting towards the West following the ouster of the Taliban from neighboring Afghanistan. Moscow worked vigorously to bring the nation back under its sway. The Kremlin repeatedly threatened the Tajik government of Imomali Rakhmonov with the expulsion of one million Tajik workers from Russia, while offering debt relief for the return to Moscow’s orbit. In October of 2004 Russian President Putin and Tajik leader Rakhmonov signed an agreement. Russia agreed to let Tajik laborers remain in Russia and forgave the country $240 million of its $300 million debt. In exchange Moscow established its permanent military presence in Tajikistan, with 5,000 thousand Russian troops deployed in the southern cities of Kulab and Kurgan-Tyube, in close proximity to NATO controlled Afghanistan. The Kremlin also secured a 49-year lease on an anti-Missile warning system at Nurek. In addition, Russian companies have been awarded controlling packages in Tajikistan’s major hydroelectric and gas energy projects, as well as in other sectors of the country’s economy. Surprisingly, at that time, many Western observers and policy makers did not see this as the beginning of Russia’s geopolitical counterattack, nor did they see it posing a major threat to Western interests in Central Asia.
I've linked to Prokudin-Gorskii before but this piece by Ctein is an appreciation of his remarkable achievement and with links to some great photographs.
War critics are rightly disappointed over the inability of congressional Democrats to mount an effective challenge to President Bush's Iraq adventure. What began as a frontal assault on the war, with tough talk about deadlines and timetables, has settled into something like a guerrilla-style campaign to chip away at war policy until the edifice crumbles.
Still, Democratic criticism of administration policy in Iraq looks muscle-bound when compared with the Party's readiness to go along with the President's massive military buildup, domestically and globally. Nothing underlines the tacit alliance between so-called foreign-policy realists and hard-line exponents of neoconservative-style empire-building more than the Washington consensus that the United States needs to expand the budget of the Defense Department without end, while increasing the size of the U.S. Armed Forces. In addition, spending on the 16 agencies and other organizations that make up the official U.S. "intelligence community" or IC -- including the CIA -- and on homeland security is going through the roof.
The numbers are astonishing and, except for a hardy band of progressives in the House of Representatives, Democrats willing to call for shrinking the bloated Pentagon or intelligence budgets are essentially nonexistent. Among presidential candidates, only Rep. Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson even mention the possibility of cutting the defense budget. Indeed, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are, at present, competing with each other in their calls for the expansion of the Armed Forces. Both are supporting manpower increases in the range of 80,000 to 100,000 troops, mostly for the Army and the Marines. (The current, Bush-backed authorization for fiscal year 2008 calls for the addition of 65,000 more Army recruits and 27,000 Marines by 2012.)
How astonishing are the budgetary numbers? Consider the trajectory of U.S. defense spending over the last nearly two decades. From the end of the Cold War into the mid-1990s, defense spending actually fell significantly. In constant 1996 dollars, the Pentagon's budget dropped from a peacetime high of $376 billion, at the end of President Ronald Reagan's military buildup in 1989, to a low of $265 billion in 1996. (That compares to post-World War II wartime highs of $437 billion in 1953, during the Korean War, and $388 billion in 1968, at the peak of the War in Vietnam.) After the Soviet empire peacefully disintegrated, the 1990s decline wasn't exactly the hoped-for "peace dividend," but it wasn't peanuts either.
However, since September 12th, 2001, defense spending has simply exploded. For 2008, the Bush administration is requesting a staggering $650 billion, compared to the already staggering $400 billion the Pentagon collected in 2001. Even subtracting the costs of the ongoing "Global War on Terrorism" -- which is what the White House likes to call its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- for FY 2008, the Pentagon will still spend $510 billion. In other words, even without the President's two wars, defense spending will have nearly doubled since the mid-1990s. Given that the United States has literally no significant enemy state to fight anywhere on the planet, this represents a remarkable, if perverse, achievement. As a famous Democratic politician once asked: Where is the outrage?
Neocons, war profiteers, and hardliners of all stripes still argue that the "enemy" we face is a nonexistent bugaboo called "Islamofascism." It's easy to imagine them laughing into their sleeves while they continue to claim that the way to battle low-tech, rag-tag bands of leftover Al Qaeda crazies is by spending billions of dollars on massively expensive, massively powerful, futuristic weapons systems.
The Death Pool is betting which will go first Ford or GM? The following is an extensive quote from an article written by Jack Brynaur, originally appeared in the May 23, 2007 version of Forbes.com.
Let’s start with GM. Instead of talking about its autos, I’ll just focus on the numbers. Over the past decade, GM’s gross profits have declined from $40 billion to $22 billion, while its debt has increased from $199 billion to over $450 billion, all during a period of historically low interest rates.
The low rates won’t last forever, though. Just over the past three years, GM’s interest expenses have risen 77% from $9 billion to $16 billion and are projected to rise to $18 billion this year. Rates are still very low by historical standards.
One of the reasons the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates is to make it easier for companies to get the cash they need to finance growth. Unfortunately, free-flowing cash also makes it easy to dig yourself into a hole. GM supposedly took on all that debt to get its profits back on track, but as you can see, the opposite has occurred.
The simple truth is that GM can’t make enough money selling cars to pay for its overhead, upkeep, salaries and dividend payments. Its solution has been to take on more and more debt, rather than spending its cash reserves, so that it can show a “profit” on quarterly income statements. In other words, GM is kiting checks all over town, using its MasterCard to pay off its Visa, burying itself ever deeper under a crushing mountain of debt.
At present margin levels and interest rates, it will take more than 20 years to pay down its debt load. Imagine what will happen when rates return to their long-term average level, as they inevitably will. With inflation looming, the Fed will have no choice but to raise interest rates at some point. It’s only a matter of time.
With the housing bubble deflating daily, here at IDWT, we anticipate the worst. CBSmarketwatch was reporting today that existing-home sales have fallen for 6th month in a row, that median sales prices were down 2.2% in past year; along with inventories beginning to shrink. Sales are down 14.2% in the past year NAR’s analysis reveals.
Will thus millions of Americans follow the trend occuring today in the UK where, according to the Registry Trust, up to a million households will face court action over their debts this year. [...]
We have to drop our pink colored glasses: there is little or nothing we can do. A debt binge is either paid or defaulted. And no lawmaker has the ability to change the outcome. Two options… only.
I am a cameraholic. I know where it began -- it was over 40 years ago. It was really my older cousin who introduced me to it. He was in the Peace Corps. and he made a stop in Japan where they were making some very fine cameras - and bought me a Pentax Spotmatic.
How he could he have known what a tale of woe would ensue.
I was about 15 years old at the time - and this was the finest piece of equipment I had ever held. It gave me a slightly euphoric feeling to use it.
But I have compiled a list of equipment which at some point I'd just like to stand here and read to you. It is sickening. I almost burnt it before I came here. Well, I'm not going to read you the list. I don't think we have the time. But here's what happened after the Spotmatic. [...]
I am sure I've left out a couple of cameras - can't remember them all. And I guess I can't confess all in my alotted time - but in conclusion (what a stupid phrase) - what you should know is that help is available. The Ansel Adams Institute (AAI) - newly funded, and situated at the top of Half Dome - is there to help you break the camera dependence cycle and live the carefree lifestyle you are entitled to.
GMO corn, soy, and potatoes show toxic effects on living animals. The GMO soy (Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready soy) we grow and eat in the US is so toxic that more than half of baby rats fed with the stuff die in just three weeks.
Hey - it's only 85% of the US soy crop, right?
The rest of the planet doesn’t want to eat this crap any more than we do. In the EU and other nations where GM foods are labelled as such, demand is zero. US export markets for rice and corn (maize) have been severely damaged by GM contamination.
To protect the public and organic farmers, four California counties banned GMO crops. Rice farmers in Arkansas and California protected their crops with laws preventing contamination by GMO crops. In fourteen other states, local and or state laws ban GMO’s.
GMO’s banned in part or all of sixteen states - almost a third of the US is protected from mutant food, right?
Not any more – the GMO labs did an end run yesterday in the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry, and the GMO labs won. Sec 123 of the new Farm Bill effectively precludes local control over GMO contamination.
This is the first of a series taken when my starter went out at the local Texaco a little over a week ago. First I had to wait for a jump start to discover it was the starter and not the battery. Then I waited for the tow truck. After dropping it off at my mechanic's I waited for Zoe to pick me up. Fortunately I had my Pentax *ist DL with me.
Gordon’s added some new camera straps to his lineup. Any possibility of a Canon E1 equivalent in the future (for big mitts like mine)? Leather breathes, where plastic/vinyl/neoprene doesn’t …
I had heard of hand straps but hadn't looked to closely at them. First I had to understand what Garret was talking about. Off to Google. I found a good picture of it at The-Digital-Picture.com. They had a review of the Canon Hand Strap E1 with a picture.
The Nikon unit is pretty elaborate. I was thinking that this type of strap was a new thing until I realized that I already had several cameras with hand straps. They are called press cameras.
This is my 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 Speed Graphic that I refinished. Look! A hand strap! I had a local leather worker make it to replace the old one.
My Mamiya Universal has a hand strap. I added some fleece to soften the plastic. So, hand straps are not a new thing after all. I'm not sure, at this point, how I would do one but it's worth thinking about. I would try and make it to fit 35mm (rangefinder and SLR) and digital cameras that have a strap attachment on top and a tripod attachment on the bottom. And just when I think I'm done with new strap designs. If I can come up with a hand strap I will send one off to Garret for product testing. Interesting...
I've added another line of camera straps to gordy's camera straps. It's the double attach point string neck strap for cameras with slotted attach points like twin lens reflexes and modern digital cameras. Also for cameras with post attach points like the Hasselblad, Pentacon Six, and my Salut-S. I've been wrestling with this for over a year. A customer came up the idea that provided the direction for the solution. I figured it out Thursday. Made up sample straps and started shooting pictures Fiday night. Finshed the pictures Saturday and started revising the website. Now it's up. It's been an intense several days.
